Meeting of the Parliament 23 May 2018
Despite their outburst, I am grateful to Conservative members for bringing today’s motion before us. Housing is important. I am also gratified to hear that they will accept the Government amendment, because I think that it would be wrong to pre-empt the outcome of the expert working group’s consideration of this critical area.
The shadow of Grenfell falls far and wide across our housing policy landscape. If we ever needed a reason to concentrate minds about building integrity, property repairs and upgrades and the need for safety checks, it is to be found in the ashes of that fire. I was proud yesterday to sign the proposal that David Stewart has lodged for a member’s bill on the installation of fire protection systems in properties of a certain size.
I was gratified by the responsibility that the property factor industry showed in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire. The Property Managers Association Scotland rushed to assist the Scottish Government in its efforts to ascertain how many buildings were exposed.
Property management is an important structure in the theatre of housing delivery in this country. By and large, factors act responsibly and offer solutions to everyday problems of communal living, whether we are talking about stair lighting, security, cleaning or insurance. They also have a place in the foothills of our democracy, in that they help to establish residents associations, through which people can work together to make their communities better and address common problems.
As is the case in any sector, there are rogue elements in the factoring trade. Members have expressed concern about factors’ responses to residents’ concerns, the collection of unpaid fees from paying customers, incremental charging increases and exorbitant one-off management fees. Such fees are often the subject of our constituency office postbags. In that regard, I can offer a great deal of support for the proposal in the Labour amendment that co-operatives step in as an alternative to factoring.
The thrust of the amendment that I lodged, which was not selected for the debate, was twofold. First, it was about the sustainability of and improvements to properties. Secondly, it recognised the backlog in repairs that are needed to our housing stock. Graham Simpson articulated that point well, when he talked about the critical repairs that are not being seen to in 28 per cent of our housing stock.
The point is that the cost of those repairs runs to billions of pounds, and someone has to pay. Invariably, up to this point, that someone has been the people who are slapped with a statutory charge notice, which is not something that anybody would expect or want. Andy Wightman—the maestro—talked about the sinking funds, or the owner-contributed repair funds, that can soften the blow that will inevitably come with that aspect of communal living, particularly with ageing stock.
This debate is very important and I am very glad of the consensus, which I did not necessarily expect, but that is a measure of the importance that the Parliament places on the issue. We need to get this right and to consider the recommendations of the cross-party working group when they are published. I am very gratified that the minister confirmed that his Government is willing to bring forward legislation, should that be required.
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